There’s an article on your site claiming Britney’s not going away because a “top noteworthy musicologist” has backed her as a musical genius.

You neglected to say that this article broke in a tabloid magazine, the Weekly World News. [admin note: Weekly World News was credited and linked]

It’s a load of rubbish. This article appeared in Weekly World News, a reknowned “tabloid” magazine.

As a former music student at the FSU school of music, I could read right through the bullcrap right away.

“Deceptive cadence” is a rudimentary compositional tool, which already rules out Britney, who doesn’t write her own songs.

If you’re familiar with cadences, a deceptive cadence is basically a cadence that, based on the context of the song, sets up to sound like it’s going to be one type of cadence (say it sets up to be an ‘Amen’ cadence, which is a IV-I, if I remember correctly), but goes to a different chord instead, say maybe a VI. My memory is a little rusty since I left the school 4 years ago and changed majors.

I was taught this element of composing in the first semester of music theory class. We were just using it in part writing techniques. It’s a basic technique.

Melisma is singing several notes to one word of text. You find that in almost any form of pop music. Yes, you can find it in Gregorian chants too, but also in the runs people do in R&B, and maybe some elongated notes.

Agogic ascent is a mere singing technique in which a note is stressed by increasing it’s duration.